For decades, my father taught biology at Middlebury College in Vermont. One of his signature courses focused on invertebrates, and as a child I often mark with Class-day trips to the coast of Maine. Students would range over the rocky coast at low tide and count how many spineless creatures as they could, which, as it turned out, it was pretty easy. There were dozens of species of invertebrates are found, including snails, crabs, starfish and of course lobster. I do not have the eyes of an octopus, but until I have about 8 My father was sporadically hosted a luncheon for its class, brought a selection of invertebrates. Students will discuss each sample, identify the various parts, and then eat. This year there will be happening residues that led my father’s house for dinner. He reached into a plastic bag, a gelatinous blob gray-pink is pulled out and put on our kitchen table. My sister and I took the eight arms covered in dozens of small suction cups, slowly realizing what happened when my father fought for the meat to be cut, which was badly cooked into manageable sections. He tasted salty chewing gum, and my sister and I spat. In early 2017, some 20 years after the first meeting of an octopus, I went to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula to meet Carlos Rosas, a biologist who is to revolutionize the way this wind gelatinous blob on dining tables. People now eat more octopus than ever: the annual world production has more than doubled since 1980, from 180,000 tons to 370,000 tons. But overfishing has the collapse of several fishing causes of wild octopus in the world, and the current population likely to face similar threats. Rosas believe Inland aquaculture raising the animals from birth to adulthood in captivity could be a way to meet its increased demand without devastating the wild population. The approach has been tested with a variety of other marine animals such as shrimp, salmon and tilapia, squid but remained stubbornly annoying puzzle. teams However, since the stability of wild populations has been uncertain and the economic challenges have increased, in Spain, Japan and other parts of the world, has also made significant progress on the surprisingly complex science behind Grapple. Critics see the prospect of growing sentient animals for food barbaric. They point out that research shows the animals are very smart, exhibiting complex behavior incompatible with indoor aquaculture. Rosas argued that it might be the best way to truly protect the long-term basis. It fluctuated between a prototype commercial scale, that is to build on top in search of ever more intensive the first farm octopus in the world. Rosas’ laboratory is located on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico he sits at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) campus in the Yucatan city of Sisal. It is rectangular building about a quarter of the size of a football field with 55 PVC end of the tube protrudes in front of the sidewalk in a white-blue cement block wall. They serve no purpose, Rosas said. The architect just thought it looked like squid arms. Rosas took me immediately into the egg incubation room, stopping a spotlight for a moment to collect. The room was dark and cold, illuminated with a dim red light. “This is designed to be a cave to imitate,” said Rosas. “We believe that more or less the temperature and the light to live animals in the sea.” Inside the product has been worked nearly 20 years of scientific research: 24 plastic containers filled with seawater and hundreds of octopus eggs. Rosas has similarly shown on the screw with the headlights towards the eggs, small bunch of white grapes. In the wild, females lay eggs this egg-strings put on the roofs of their caves, where stalactites suspended as extremely fragile. “They’re hatching,” said Rosas, after seeing this, despite the hundreds, if not thousands of times sound, still stunned. “You’re a lucky man.” At the end of Spotlight, I could see a group of octopus maya. Their bodies were only about the size of a fingernail and translucent; some softball-size, intelligent beings would grow in them. Ärmchen wisped sprayed from behind them as the casing. Some even took their first tentative steps on the plastic sides. The Yucatan octopus fishing season runs from August to December. If the weather is calm, thousands of fishermen leave their homes before dawn and head for the water. To reduce costs, people form groups, whipping their individual Alijos-boats together in a makeshift pontoon and share a driver for the team. Once you arrive to the day fishing spot, the fishermen disperse. Each of their Alijos jimbas is called with at least two (and sometimes more than a dozen) long wooden bars, fishermen, measures its lines. Then it binds a soft-shell crab at the end of the line and falls into the water. The Alijo drifts with the current, pull the bait along the sea bed. When a hungry octopus catches sight of the crab step, sticks, wrapping her arms tightly around their price. Alarmed by the nod of Jimba reeling the fishing starts in the string. The octopus, concentrating on her meal, hung to his capture until it lands in his kidnappers in his hands. If fishing can not immediately tear the octopus from the line extending in the eye with a finger. The main merit of Jimba technology, by accident or design, the built-in environmental protection. If a female octopus is ready to lay eggs, he first finds a place to hide the cave corals or other sea cave is enough. Sometimes it decorates his cave with stones and shells. Here the balls for the only time in his life one-to-two years, and protects them fiercely. It is not, and will not eat. Eggs are his only concern. A passing crab Jimba drawn, then it is not of interest to them. Mother altruism and inherently selective nature of Jimba method, both they and their children rescued from human hands. with Jimba Fishing is the only legal way to catch squid in Yucatan, but the industry is regulated uneven. While the government imposes a quota, can not keep exact count or do much illegal fishing to avoid leaving the fishermen or less short of authorities regulate itself. In view of the immediate financial pressure, many locals fear that fishing for squid in Mexico the way it was where massive trawl sweep go the rest of the world, by the ocean, indiscriminately tow up squid all genders and ages, regardless of environmental falling off. Morocco, for example, was once the largest squid suppliers worldwide. In 2000, the country began 99,400 tons of squid, more than twice the streets of Japan, the nearest competitor. In 2004, it declined by only 19,200 tons. The Moroccan government has tried since then to adjust better serve the industry from quotas and fishing moratoria imposed, but despite some modest success, it is not the industry of the country octopus fishing is or should ever return to its former heights. Other countries have taken since the octopus production casing. the biggest squid caught huge 120,000 tons (until 2000, the country produced just 4.6 tons) According to the latest reliable data, in 2014 China had by far. Japan and Mexico in 2014 second and third largest producers, moved 35,000 tons and 34,000 tons. No one knows exactly how much more global octopus can grow production, before the industry gets everything collapse. In addition, over-fishing are the harmful effects can be exacerbated by climate change. In the short term the warming of waters may benefit cephalopods, but some experts, including Rosas, the concern that current octopus hangouts eventually become uninhabitable, sinking to mass migrations or population. Commercial agriculture, says Rosas, the solution could be. But until now no one has cracked. When Rosas was a teenager in the early 1970s, he built his first aquarium in the garage of his parents. “We have a lot of goldfish has produced,” he recalls of the effort, which undertook with his friend from the bottom block. They sold their small harvest as a pet with other children in their Mexico City neighborhood. Within a few years, the marine biology program love life Rosas’ at the National University had drawn him to. These studies have led to the promotion, and a dissertation on Crab a practice still in nascent stage, at the time of reproduction. He saw them rise in floating cages, but before he could make much progress the country scientific attention, and resources shifted to shrimp, which the government saw as the next frontier of Mexican aquaculture. Rosas and his colleagues turned their attention properly on shrimp, and creates a tight budget, what is called Rosas a “very primitive laboratory” with second-hand equipment in a dirty floor buildings. Paddle collecting water for the laboratory from an already shaky boat in the sea, so it’s easy to sink, and back hauling that could bring the ship. The temporary operation, he says, has produced some of the first captive raised shrimp Mexico. But the triumph was short-lived, as the largest and best-funded operations last its production capacity relatively limited detonated quickly. Bored and looking for a new project, it was not until Rosas found one. The local government on the Yucatan Peninsula was looking for someone who explore aquaculture obviously octopus. 2003 Rosas made a revitalized its operations to the laboratory in Sisal and began to read everything he could on the subject. Progress was slow, but he was thrilled. “For me it was a new girlfriend,” says Rosas. Jose Iglesias, a Spanish octopus expert and a leader for a long time in aquaculture community reminds me of an early visit to the workshop with a laugh: “He does not know anything” In all honesty, scientists have long struggled with octopus Agriculture, The difficulty growing squid begin at birth. Many species, Octopus vulgaris, the common octopus Luca as one paralarval stage is called being developed uniquely determined octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Paralarval squid has arms and floats like plankton stocky, almost nonexistent. They drive through the water column completely to the current whims, and suck what microscopic food that they can as they grow to adulthood, when they finally settle on the seabed. these early stages of life in a laboratory Replica is a monumental task, but not impossible. What is widely considered the first closure of the octopus life came in 1962, he grew up as a Japanese scientist named Kouzo Itami and her newborn vulgaris team until old enough to resolve larvae grown on the bottom of the tank. There were 200 hundred animals to begin studying; about 40 days, if those who remained reaches the adult stage is less than 20. The rest, wrote the researchers hunting “cannibalism and water their livestock off the strip.” The study was a success in many ways, but the abysmal survival rate of 9% was not promising much business. Since 1975, much of the cephalopod research came from the National Resource Center in the world for cephalopods, in Galveston, Texas. Scientists there could reliably increase its squid over generations and their findings provided valuable information on how cuttlefish could also be raised. The work suggested that the Japanese success was not accidental and famine of the 1990s, researchers in Spain had taken Squid Aquaculture. In 2004, Iglesias announced probably the biggest advance since Itami when his laboratory in Spain also closed the Octopus vulgaris life cycle, this time with a survival rate of 31.5%. While more than tripled the rate of marketable Itami was by far not yet. The animals were just too picky. Even small changes in temperature, dissolved oxygen content or salinity-under a variety of other factors may be fatal- (not cannibalism problem much less). And these variables is difficult to control on a large scale. But Rosas said that, given sufficient resources, challenges to overcome. “With the money,” he says, “in a year, it could be solved.” One of the key advantages Rosas working with Octopus maya, rather than the Octopus vulgaris. This type of polyp, endemic to the Yucatan, skips the paralarval phase and arises essentially as a miniature adults, illustrate more robust. No matter squid-maya or anyway to collect eggs are very difficult to increase. Back sisal, Rosas took me in a room next to the incubator to show me his then latest solution to what is probably the largest remaining obstacle octopus aquaculture: the efficiency feed the children. He opened the top of a large cooler: at home, sitting on red lunch trays, were of white shells rows, each about the size of a quarter, filled with a rosaer pasta tuft Rosas identified as a mixture of squid and crabs . Workers assemble these shell-combinations paste by hand, one by one, and feed them individually to the squid. Three bowls in the morning, three in the afternoon, and the child usually has a few more in between. The lab can go thousands of shells on the day. Children, like Rosas put it, are “greedy.” The shells are laborious and expensive. But Rosas says they are very nutritious, and once on the diet that squid grow exponentially. Born just 100 milligrams, after a month, are 10 times greater. After a few months, a Mayan octopus weighs 1:59 kg or 10,000 to 20,000 times what they weighed at birth. Rosas says his survival rate hovers around 60% to 70% percent; Double Iglasias’ by early 2000. When his mature squid, Rosas moved both large tanks in the main area of research in the center of the building or pool diameter six meters just outside, the place-dependent. He took me into the inner container before. The water in black, rectangular tanks it was just a few inches deep and dotted with small shells and stones, according to which, as to hide the squid. Peering down, I saw an octopus, no bigger than a hand sticking out of the shell he had chosen to occupy. In the dog was another, smaller squid. “If you are not good nutrition,” said Rosas, “they prefer his half-brother.” Rosas tries to fight cannibalism with plenty of food and space. But it increased its investment in size steadily and is at capacity. is difficult to obtain funds for research in Mexico, says Rosas. E ‘has long struggled on the road with low cost. In the late 2000s, Rosas approached a cooperative local woman to ask for help tending his calamari. He offered a deal: if they have helped to increase the youth of the child, sell them and keep the proceeds. One of the four women who agreed Silvia Canul, told me that her husband Antonio Cobb, a local fisherman, was against the idea at first. “He thought I waste my time,” he says. The cooperative cut his first game of squid in 2012, and the market quickly drew. Chefs bought 200 grams-teens whose coveted tenderness 80 pesos per person, four times the market price for adults caught in the wild. With the proceeds Canul bought a shipping white pedal tricycle. If Cobb saw the new bike, it developed a sudden interest in the cooperative. He now works in the laboratory Agriculture squid Rosas’. The learning curve was steep, even for Cobb, a fisherman who has spent his life for the animals most. The most simple sound tasks, such as discovering the octopus sex, for example, require excessive patience. (Cobb says you have for a thin optical system, signage vein along the third right arm of a male octopus is carried This tube sperm from the tip of the arm and bears in the female ..) Canul is the difficult handling and squid; dock animals like human arms and hands with the suction cups. In the first place, they had to water the squid in an alcohol solution, to make them “drunk” and more controllable. It ‘s always better; The trick, she says, which is immersed in water to keep. But neither Canul Cobb still found a solution for color. “Just on the face,” he mutters. “You look at her and she with ink.” However, the success of the cooperative can not solve the Rosas’ inability to secure additional properties for his company. At one point, the government, the cooperative a new plot Sisal, along with 1.5 million pesos (about $79,000) grant to build a pilot farm, but a local politician in the poor city property that has already announced package is assigned to a housing development, condemning the project. A few years later, Rosas former students came to test him to build an inland farm in a town called Hunucma, about 15 miles. Initially they made great country cognitive progress (the courtyard of the student), clearing it, the drilling of two wells, and even six of the 12 tanks (each with a capacity of up to 3,000 squid) to buy they would. There were certainly challenges. It is unclear, for example, such as mass-squids s harvest would. The most humane method is apparently to reduce the temperature in the tanks. But if you do, squid sucking down on the ground by hundreds and must be removed individually. Sucker Sucker. Still, everything seemed on track, lost to an investor his work. The others will soon be tired of the effort, too. While they raise on the property recently a couple of tanks installed Tilapia, all octopuses have decided ambitions on hold. Aside from Aristotle, who was the octopus has long linked the cephalopods “a stupid creature,” people are called. Minoans a Mediterranean maritime civilization celebrated creatures on vases and frescoes. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, rave about his smart way to wedge open the shells with pebbles, to get the inside food. In Japan, the tentacles has taken on sexual connotations; sculptures of the 18th century erotic octopus of a modern form of animated pornography tentacles tried called. Recent years have seen an explosion of celebrity octopus. Hank was a harsh but heroic octopus in mini movie Finding Dory. Paul, an alleged clairvoyant Octopus vulgaris, only the results of all planned in Germany during the 2010 World Cup, including the final. Inky, a cordiformis Pinnoctopus, escaped from the National Aquarium in New Zealand by 164 ft shimmying. From the exhaust pipe in freedom. A quick search on YouTube brings countless other talents octopus blows up: walking on two legs, opening jars and play with Lego. Despite their cultural ubiquity squid have remained relatively niche scientific research themes. A 1992 study in Science presumably found that cuttlefish are “students of observation,” that is, you can figure out the tasks that just by watching another octopus run. In the animal kingdom there is a fairly high level of skill. But the article drew criticism from other researchers and has yet to be replicated. However, there are some things we know specifically of squid. Your nervous system, for example, are more decentralized that people: in addition to a main brain in the head, you have eight smaller neural centers in each arm. An octopus is also able to recognize another member of the species as an individual. They must be known as associative learners, meaning that connect new behaviors or reactions to certain stimuli. “When an animal is shown a lever which results in a food reward, the animal learns to press the lever, and will do so progressively more quickly and efficiently,” neuroscientist Eric Kandel writes in his book 2016 reductionism of art and neuroscience. In the laboratory, some squid were also able to get this kind of response after a single attempt. In his book 2016 Other Minds: The Octopus, the sea, and the deep origins of consciousness, science philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith takes the high amount of variation between individual squid. For example, in a study of the lever stroke highlights two octopus the task performed very gently while the third pulled on the handle so hard and bent by the 11th attempt broken. There is still much we do not know about Octopus intelligence, said Peter Tse, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Tse lab was experimenting with mirrors octopus brain to explore. The first time you put an octopus ago, they either run away or try to grab it, he says. Fairly quickly, but they realize that there is another octopus. “Some sit in front of the mirror and groom,” said Tse. Fairly quickly, but they realize that there is another octopus. They seem to be able to also use the mirror as a tool. Tse noted that, able to recognize with practice, the squid that the mirror image of a crab in the mirror only one reflection, and can use the mirror to find the crab in other parts of the tank. This, he says, means that they “rather complicated three-dimensional representation of their tanks” In recent years, my father has studied the octopus behavior, and not long ago, he took his then current research cohort to meet calamari. We put on white shirts Octopus as we enter the room, no bigger than a walk-in closet. There were two 30-liter tank rows of four, the tenth laboratories California two points lot octopus (Octopus bimaculoides, also known as “bimacs”) included. Each container was labeled with the number of octopus ID, date of birth and name: Charlie Piper, George, Mighty Joe Young, Franklin, Muh-Shell, Vader, and Boo Swimmy. It was not the power, then most of the squid were hiding in shells or flower pots. But Mighty Joe Young, a female 10 months old, she was awake and bounces her tank. There came on the glass as we approached, apparently curious, so we expect her an orange ping pong ball gave to play. “She is fascinated,” he said slowly closer to the ball floating on the surface as my father stole the octopus. Mighty Joe has achieved one of its eight arms and touched exploring the intruding object, its surface gently with the suction cups. We watched as they went backward, and came to the ball from a different angle. Then again. For the next few minutes he was moving back and forth to find out what had invaded their space. My father laughed. “You wonder where the hell is the crab,” he said. “Okay, I’ll give a crab.” He took a fiddler crab from its hiding place on the bench behind him, and left him in the tank. As the crab hovered inches from Mighty Joe Young face down, he jumped into action. The crab was gone in seconds. Mighty Joe flowing movements were mesmerizing and it was easy to see how authors like Sy Montgomery so passionate about these creatures. Montgomery is a polyp, the author of the bestselling book The Soul: Explore amazing exploration in the miracle of consciousness that both biology and squid personality. Each chapter of an octopus called the New England Aquarium met: Athena, Octavia, Kali. “I often had the feeling that watching the octopus that was watching me back,” he writes. “How can it be?” My father has a little ‘cautious animal anthropomorphism forever. “We include all these things in the animal,” he says, “and that is to do a dangerous thing in animal behavior research.” But, looking Mighty Joe, also slipped away, crying out, “What do you think, what?” The question octopus intelligence is central to debates about aquaculture. In January, for example, it claimed in 2019 the paper from a professor at New York University Jennifer Jacquet that their ethical intelligence cul-de-sac make agriculture. One problem, he says, is that squid is Predator which means that agriculture would probably require “exploit [ing] wild animals, feeding the farm animals.” The other problem is that they are living beings. “Even the best-intentioned Octopus agriculture does not meet the conditions necessary for a meaningful octopus lives,” says Jacquet, adding that consumers have the rare opportunity to say no to an animal agricultural sector before it is profitable, “If we do not, I think [this] will be a case in which gain economic interest in the ongoing moral imperative. ” Author signed Co. In a recent open letter Jacquet more than 100 scientists the idea that the octopus agriculture is immoral. “A life in solitary confinement for a curious mind is ethically wrong,” says Jacquet. My father, for example, squid was eating shortly after it began it-must study too smart, he says. Rosas is less conflict. He was pulpo always loved to eat, and remember to cook for him as a child to his mother. You bring home the octopus, and it was his duty to make the meat tender. “I have a lot of time spent to beat the octopus,” he says. Even after nearly two decades of work with the squid, he never really got emotionally attached. The animals in his laboratory have numbers, not names. Not that Rosas denied their intelligence, but rather the question of whether they are actually much more unique other than the plurality animals already eat for food. “Humanity in a contradiction,” he says. “Many people are interested in the evolution of cephalopods, but many people are also interested in these animals in the kitchen.” As we will resolve this contradiction, the future of agriculture Rosas form of gambling it is squid are acceptable as food, as well as other intelligent beings like pigs? Or will they be considered taboo, such as primates? Rosas has not seen his taste for octopus in the near future to change, and only think of global demand continues to grow. He also believes that it is only a matter of years, before an operation for the animals to be ready to help one that hopefully growth in Mexico. But Rosas’ teams delays in other parts of the world, given the opportunity to close the gap. Groups in Spain and Japan say they have developed new tanks and breeding techniques, the survival rate was over 50% as good, and that is advanced with the most complicated paralarval squid. “We believe that we have passed the stage of bottleneck”, a Spanish team said. These developments do not worry Rosas, cooperation instead of competition seen as the way forward. Last November, he invited scientists from around the world to Sisal octopus aquaculture to discuss. He also works with colleagues in Europe and South America best to develop cost-effective way to get the squid like his squid pasta to feed filled shells. Try a pellet or flake design (as food for traditional aquarium fish), which can easily be thrown in the tank, and Rosas says, “to send almost ready for the market.” He bit Rosas are also looking for new investors. Because of his past experience, Rosas errs on the side of caution when it comes to timing. “It ‘s very difficult for us to predict,” he says. But he says no to a rare tour; in diesem Jahr, Rosas, sagt er Gruppen von potenziellen Investoren gehostet wird nicht nur aus Mexiko, aber auch Spanien und Italien und dem Vereinten Nationen Entwicklungsprogramm als auch. Die Gäste werden oft zu einer Mahlzeit Krake behandelt durch die kooperative vorbereitet. “Wir essen sie”, sagt Rosas. “Wir machen ein Fest. Bild Copyright Jake Naughton für TIME
To build within the first spot Octopus Farm World Travel
